Distracting attention from common sense policies by bringing up wedge social issues has been the strategy of the Republican Party for nearly a generation, so it’s not exactly surprising that Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-KS), would imply that “great minds” who came from low-income families, including Barack Obama and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, would have been aborted if their mothers had had the chance to get free or low-cost abortions. The bill he was arguing against does not provide federal dollars for abortions – it simply lifts restrictions on Washington D.C. that prevented the city from using its own money for family planning.

“In television interviews she was out of her depth in a shallow pool. She was limited in her ability to explain and defend her positions, and sometimes in knowing them. She couldn’t say what she read because she didn’t read anything.”

“The elites hate her.” The elites made her. It was the elites of the party, the McCain campaign and the conservative media that picked her and pushed her. The base barely knew who she was. It was the elites, from party operatives to public intellectuals, who advanced her and attacked those who said she lacked heft. She is a complete elite confection. She might as well have been a bonbon.”

Peggy Noonan, usually a terrible bore and a Republican Party hack. But she happens to be right today.

During the course of this campaign Mark Neumann will be providing a great deal of details on plans to significantly change health care in Wisconsin in order to address the clear problems that exist.

The solutions will be private sector ideas applied on a larger scale to improve the health care system for everyone in Wisconsin. The solutions will simultaneously save the taxpayers of our state a significant amount of money. As the campaign progresses, there will be more information on this important issue.

That is essentially the sum of the health care section of his website. Granted, it’s usually a bore when politicians tell you exactly what they’re planning to do to make our lives better. Don’t they know that we like surprises? That’s why Mark keeps it short.

At least that’s what you can expect to hear over the next few hours on cable news shows. Just take a stroll through the comments section of Ann Althouse, a UW law professor and avid Rush Limbaugh fan. Among my favorite comments:

Nothing seems to stop this warrior woman.

There are people who would like to be president of what america was, but no one wants to be president of what it is.

What’s incredible is that even the NYTimes is discussing this sudden resignation as a possible move to gear up for a 2012 presidential bid. How can such a claim be met with anything but ridicule? Could America possibly be that stupid? I always tell people that, hey, maybe Obama wasn’t the most experienced guy – I voted for a smart, lawyer dude. Sarah Palin is neither smart nor experienced, and she’s already got all the publicity she needs.

My bet would be a talk radio gig. She’d be great, she can screen out the critical callers and she can talk about little league hockey here and there.

Candice Dainty, statewide organizer for the national group Second Amendment Sisters, is outspoken in her belief that guns — carried in the open or concealed — should be allowed anywhere: schools, public buildings, hospitals.

With two area murders in the past two weeks, two officers shot, and a popular candy store owner killed in Milwaukee — all by gunfire — it might seem to be an odd time to try to get more guns on the street. But gun advocates say this is the perfect time to build momentum for a movement that is already gaining traction.

Earlier this year, she tried to organize a rally to take place on June 16 on the grounds of the State Capitol. She scrubbed the plan, ironically, because she was afraid of who might show up with a gun.

“In every whole group, you’re going to have a nut case or two,” she says. “And my rally drew out the nut cases.”

Really? So supporting concealed weapons is great until, well, people are actually allowed to carry them.

David Blaska and I have something in common: we both think sagging pants is super-lame. However, until recently I considered it strictly a fashion crime, and I was pretty sure that if I did encounter a particularly bad offender, I would probably only call MPD’s non-emergency line. Yes, it occasionally kept me awake at night, but, like so many other problems in the world, I accepted that it would never change.

Excuse me, but no matter what the liberal media wants you to believe, underwear is NOT funny and it is certainly not sexy. Thank God we have a local advocate who understands this. That is why he has listed it as item number 11 on his 14 point “ACTION LIST” to improve neighborhood safety.

I was impressed the first time he brought up the panties problem. However, perhaps out of cynicism, I assumed that, like most noble activists, Blaska would eventually be pushed into discussing more conventional theories on crime – education, poverty, discrimination, drug addiction, alcoholism, and our prison system. Clearly I underestimated the man. Not only did he persevere with the issue of visible boxers with a second post on the matter, but he managed to avoid discussing any of that bullshit liberal apologism. OK, he mentioned education in the preamble to his list but then said that they were meaningless until respect, order and discipline are restored – translation: until you pull your pants up and stop getting your hair cut by a gay barber there is no way in hell those sons of bitches will learn a goddamn thing. Conveniently, Blaska also opines on parenting:

If kids are screwed up it is usually because they don’t have fathers in their ear. They don’t need someone to listen to their blather as much as they need someone to be listening to. Defining limits and expanding horizons.

Once upon a time I actually believed Blaska to be an extremely unintelligent, deranged man. A delightful mixture of Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. But after going to the store, buying a pair of suspenders and pulling my pants up as high as they could go (the nipple), I realized that not only should this man be elected mayor of Madison, but he should be appointed as dictator so that he can truly implement his philosophy on parenting on the whiny council and the unappreciative citizens.

“I don’t think anybody involved in the system does not believe we could save some money by letting some people out of the prison system,” said Sen. Glenn Grothmann, R-West Bend. “And I am therefore not particularly adamantly opposed to the proposal.”

The new plan is actually a setback on the one originally proposed by Doyle. It allows early release after convicts have served 75 percent of their sentences, rather than 67 percent. A real plan would have included a considerably more radical change, which would allow convicts, especially non-violent drug offenders, to drastically reduce their prison sentences through participation in job-training programs, addiction counseling, etc. Depsite the improvements, Wisconsin will continue to have a backwards and ineffective prison system for the foreseeable future. The reason is most clearly demonstrated by Rep. Scott Suder, a Republican from Abbotsford who referred to early-release as “rewarding bad behavior.”

It rewards bad behavior. Letting people out for good behavior somehow encourages bad behavior. I am tempted to say that this is the stupidest comment I’ve ever heard in Wisconsin politics, but maybe I’m just not smart enough to understand such foreign reasoning. Is there some law of physics that I’m missing here?

Interesting forum up at the Daily Page about potential challengers for Mayor Dave Cieslewicz in 2011. This is of course in light of a Cap Times article a couple weeks back that discussed Dave’s alienation of Madison’s hard left. Although some of the descriptions of the mayor go to comical extremes, Dave has clearly become disillusioned with much of the progressive coalition that got him elected in 2003 and 2007. And that of course, is his biggest political sin.

Although he’s taken more centrist positions on a couple of issues, notably the bus fare hike, the main case against Dave seems to be that he’s a traitor. Of course, the group of people who actually take his “rejection very personally” is very small, however, it will be sure to make plenty of noise in the next couple years to remind us that authoritarianism is not restricted to governments with nuclear capabilities – the streetcar proposal was simply the development phase of National Socialism.

Anyhow, it’s really entertaining reading some of the potential candidates people have suggested at the Isthmus. In terms of absurdity I think it’s a tie between Dave Blaska and Mike Verveer. Although I would say Verveer has a better chance, I would not be able to make a truly educated guess until I got his stance on safety, which I’ve already got from Blaska, who included the following as part of his 14 point plan to make our streets safer:

Although I do agree that it is a degradation of western society when a woman’s bra strap is visible under a tank top, I am slightly concerned that this type of policy could potentially harm those of us who ocassionally use under-garments for alternative purposes. Personally I like to wear boxer-briefs on my head from time to time. I don’t think I should need to explain myself to the fashion police because of this.